Ha…you seem to have made the same careless mistake as Jeb Bush on his campaign trail - he said the normal retirement age is 65 (and he would like to raise it gradually.)
The fact is that the full retirement age for new retirees is at least 66 yo. (Mine is 66, for example. My wife’s is even higher.)
Thanks God that Medicare kicks in at 65.
No your post(54) stated 65. I know mine is higher than 65, same with my husband. So the amount could be slightly reduced but not much. I think my SS statement state some similar amount for full retirement, going by memory of course.
I actually received a paper version of SS statement a couple of months ago. (It’s amazing SS could find my current address. I do not think I notified them when I moved.)
Going by my memory only, if I keep working till 66, I could only collect $2200 or $2300. The key here is that I have to work till 66. I have not created an online account. One in my TODO list is to create an account there.
I won’t be working until 67 either but the key is 35 years which I have more than 35 years. Most of those years are high earnings, only the college years then it was less than high earning. But even for those years, there is an index to multiply to. For example I had one year, senior year in college, iirc, I earned $20 of social security wages. I think there is a multiplier of either 4 or 9, which makes that amount to be less than $1000 I today’s money. You want to avoid the zero years. But I’m not looking to maximize SS either, just 90% of the amount.
The strategy I am favoring now is to put off taking SS until 70. That would give us each about $2700/month. Scale down to 32 hours/week after 60 - ease into retirement while keeping income and health insurance. Retire fully at 65 - take Medicare. Use IRA to supplement from 65 - 70. Planning to be 100% debt-free by 60. I think it is workable.
I worked probably 35 years but some of those years were with the state govt, which didn’t pay SS, so my quarters for those years don’t count toward SS. Nonetheless, to me, it is NOT useful to talk or think about “the average.” What helped us as has been posted previously, is to take a look at your spending over the past few years. Look at items that will continue forever and those which will stop once you’ve stopped working. Consider new categories of expenses that will start once you stop working. Look at streams of income that will continue and those that will stop. Figure out whether you will get any specific payments in the future and when those start and guesstimate those amounts.
If you do all of these things, you should have some idea of how your finances stack up toward a comfortable retirement. It may be that you’ll need 150% of your current income or perhaps 50%, depending on whether you will be doing expensive travel/hobbies, etc. or not when you have more time and have stopped working.
The big stock shift has hurt this past week, no lie. Our 401k went from a 5.84% gain from Jan 1 to Aug 17, to essentially losing all of this years gain with Jan 1 to Aug 21 with a .31% loss. The one week meant the account went down almost $45,000.
Got an investment committee update from our financial guy Aug 21. There are 3 bear market indicators that they monitor, none of them are signaling a bear market or recession at this time. They also do not believe that this is a time to panic since we are only about 4.5% - 5% off an all time high.
Our financial group adviser uses a Precision Capital Management (PCM) trigger that will go off if the S & P 500 closes below 2026, thereby preserving capital.
I hope we are not going into a bear market. We are in the 3rd longest streak in history of the S & P w/o a 10% correction.
Looking forward to hearing more from our financial adviser at the end of the year, when we can move money from 401k with reaching age 59.5. Hope to shelter some money from volatility of the market with the safety of the PCM trigger.
That’s where I am right now and exactly what I’m doing. I have a small pension, and DH and I have some work income (not as much as I’d like, of course!) and are using our IRA $$$ to keep us going until we collect full retirement at age 70. The difference between collecting one’s SS benefit at age 66 and the bigger benefit at age 70 is a whopping 32%. Since I plan to live well into my 90s, it’s worth it for me.
Don’t forget, BTW, that any cost of living increase on your SS benefit would be applied to the bigger benefit, if you wait until age 70.
Waiting is not a good idea for everyone. It depends on your life expectancy and your current income and savings.
I am not sure anyone has mentioned filing and suspending their SS. When I turn 66 next August H, then 67, will file for SS. I will then recieve 50% of his SS until he turns 70. At that time he will take his own SS and I will no longer recieve any of his.
During the 2 years and 8 months that I recieve 50% of his both of our own SS monies will increase 8% per year.
There is a lot of misunderstanding about filing and suspending but we finally sorted it out and checked on the details multiple times.
Agree with @oregon101 about a spouse being able to use the spouse benefit with the ‘file and suspend’ action, and then later bumping up to bigger benefit.
Be sure to sort out all the information to make the right decision for your situation.
You do not want to not claim $$ that you are eligible for!
We are waiting for H to retire after H and I are both eligible for MC (6 years from now). We are still working on more details for us as we get closer to that mark.
“ease into retirement while keeping income and health insurance.” - Nice gig if you can get it 
^^think you have to work for the government or be a CEO with a golden parachute for that one, colorado_mom!
I am two years older than DH and I have always been the higher earner. When DH reaches age 66, I’ll be 68, and he will file for his spousal benefit under my SS. When I am 70, I’ll file for my full benefit and the spousal benefit will stop. When he is 70, he’ll file for his full benefit.
Someone (maybe on CC??) mentioned the website MaximizeMySocialSecurity.com. I used it and it was extremely helpful in determining what strategy to use to get the most out of SS.
H is reading that ^ book right now
VH, we used the website (paid $40) and it was very very helpful.
VH, I thought your H could continue to receive a 50% spousal benefit (on your earnings) until he turns age 70, then he claims his own full benefit, which has increased by 8% per year for waiting to take them.
@NicoleMichael: You are right. I misspoke.
Today’s Manic Monday on the American Stock Market…I will resist seeing what it did to our 401k…
I could not resist and took a peek.
It is bad. It (the stock portion) dropped about 10% - 12% in the past couple of days, I guess. I told my wife I would like to transfer it to “stable value” (I think it is a kind of short term bond) but she thought it would be a bad idea (as if she knew more about this than me.) So I did not transfer it.
“I could not resist and took a peek.
It is bad. It (the stock portion) dropped about 10% - 12%, I guess. I told my wife I would like to transfer it to “stable value” (I think it is a kind of short term bond) but she thought it would be a bad idea (as if she knew more about this than me.) So I did not transfer it.”
Listen to your wife! What do you want to do, lock in a loss? Didn’t most of the people who lost money in 2008, do so because they sold? How do you lose money if you just don’t sell, and hang on until it goes back up? It always does. We are buying more, right now.
Then again, I have no idea of what I’m doing, so don’t listen to me!